Past Lives?

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
alan
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by alan »

pink_trike wrote:I've wondered why nobody remembers being an aging salesman in Bismark, South Dakota, a factory worker in Barcelona, or a janitor in Kiev. Always the exotic past lives, never the excruciatingly mundane.
HaHa! Good point.
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Naga
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by Naga »

notself wrote:
It would be so cool if someone would remember being a lion or tiger or bear. Oh my! :tongue:
That would be horrible--to remember causing the deaths of so many other creatures in the grip of your own jaws.
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by Paññāsikhara »

notself wrote:I wonder why no one remembers past lives that are not related to the history that is part of their local culture. For example why does no one from Northern European decent ever remember being a child or adult from Africa or the Arctic area such as Siberia? There is nothing in the suttas that suggests that one is reborn only within a specific geographic area.
My guess would be, that the way the mind works, it is more likely to remember / recall phenomena that are similar to the present conditions.
eg. when in the living room of your parents house, you will be more likely to recall events that have happened in that living room, or that house. You will be less likely to recall events from another house.
Likewise for recollections as a human, as opposed to some other form.

And, by the way, reading through various data about recalled past lives, there are plenty of people recalling lives from other places. See Edgar Casey, for instance.
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notself
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by notself »

Well then how about a goat or a cow or a deer? :tongue:
Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, yet he is indeed the noblest victor who conquers himself. ---Dhp 103
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by Paññāsikhara »

pink_trike wrote:I've wondered why nobody remembers being an aging salesman in Bismark, South Dakota, a factory worker in Barcelona, or a janitor in Kiev. Always the exotic past lives, never the excruciatingly mundane.
I've seen quite a few stories of claimed past lives that are very mundane.
Maybe the exotic ones get more air time, etc. make a deeper impression (to the modern person).
Even the OP claims are quite boring - serf / slave.
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tiltbillings
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by tiltbillings »

Paññāsikhara wrote: See Edgar Casey, for instance.
Edgar Cayce.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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catmoon
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by catmoon »

I wonder if this is how past lives appear to us: in the form of images during meditation. I have, on a couple of occaisions, had images of people flash out of the darkness, in quite good clarity - people I had never seen before, who seemed somehow connected but also strangely alien. If these are images from past lives then I am not reaching back more than a century or so. The clothing is too modern. The gender has always so far been male and the images from late in life. And they both looked like manual laborers, one I thought was a railway worker of some kind. They looked like they had lived hard lives. Sorry, no Napoleon Bonaparte.
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tiltbillings
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by tiltbillings »

pink_trike wrote:I agree with Ben. The mind is a funny thing...we can't pretend that we understand the "extraordinary " things that appear in the mind stream. I once ingested a substance that caused the mind to serve up the experience of flying my house above the town I lived in for about an hour, with Gumby and Pokey as my co-pilots. . . .
Sure; on the other hand, it is not out of the realm of possibilities that the mind stream may also, in some cases, deliver what very well may be actual "memories" of a past life.
I've wondered why nobody remembers being an aging salesman in Bismark, South Dakota, a factory worker in Barcelona, or a janitor in Kiev. Always the exotic past lives, never the excruciatingly mundane.
Always? Not in the OP accounting and certainly not many other accountings.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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tiltbillings
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by tiltbillings »

JoanOfArc wrote:Dearest faithful,

In my past life, I was Helen of Troy.
And this is helpful how?
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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catmoon
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by catmoon »

tiltbillings wrote:
JoanOfArc wrote:Dearest faithful,

In my past life, I was Helen of Troy.
And this is helpful how?
By being funny, it raises spirits and fosters a sense of community. Maybe?
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tiltbillings
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by tiltbillings »

catmoon wrote:
tiltbillings wrote:
JoanOfArc wrote:Dearest faithful,

In my past life, I was Helen of Troy.
And this is helpful how?
By being funny, it raises spirits and fosters a sense of community. Maybe?
Maybe.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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DNS
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by DNS »

JoanOfArc wrote: In my past life, I was Helen of Troy.
Helen? I would have thought Joan of Arc?
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tiltbillings
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by tiltbillings »

David N. Snyder wrote:
JoanOfArc wrote: In my past life, I was Helen of Troy.
Helen? I would have thought Joan of Arc?
As long as it is not Joan of Snark.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by Paññāsikhara »

tiltbillings wrote:
Paññāsikhara wrote: See Edgar Casey, for instance.
Edgar Cayce.
Ah! Thank you! It's been a while since I looked into him, and I do confess, that as I was typing that post, I had to think for a couple of minutes - to still get the wrong spelling! (I knew something didn't look right.) :P
My recently moved Blog, containing some of my writings on the Buddha Dhamma, as well as a number of translations from classical Buddhist texts and modern authors, liturgy, etc.: Huifeng's Prajnacara Blog.
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pink_trike
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Re: Past Lives?

Post by pink_trike »

tiltbillings wrote:Sure; on the other hand, it is not out of the realm of possibilities that the mind stream may also, in some cases, deliver what very well may be actual "memories" of a past life.
Perhaps. But we have no way of knowing. Why build stories about them? These memories could very well be preverbal mental constructions serving any number of purposes or no purposes at all. All memories are slippery - I base this opinion partly on having witnessed psychotherapy clients endlessly and sincerely tell different versions of memories at different times in the psychotherapeutic process, and having seem intelligent, sane clients realize that things they clearly "remembered" actually never took place. No point in speculating whether mental constructions that play out in the theater of "before this life" are reflections of actual "past lives" or not, or using them to prop up a faith-determined belief. Imo, we do best to note them and let em go...they're just more fireworks in the present mind stream. That's not to say that these mental constructions that are taking place in the moment of now can't be useful...they can sometimes be reflective of all kinds of mental/emotional patterns taking place in this life that we aren't conscious of...they may reflect our shadow territory, things we don't know about how we are operating in the world. Being aware of these mental constructions that are forming and arising in the present can beneficially cast light on this life.
tiltbillings wrote:Always? Not in the OP accounting and certainly not many other accountings.
Medieval. Blacksmith. Ancient Greece. Marble rooms. Serfs. Slaves. Not so different from Kings. Queens. Handmaidens. Knights. American Indian. India. Egypt. Ireland, Sumer, Mu. I wouldn't be able to count the number of times I've heard these themes over the decades. I was just pointing out that it must be extremely rare for someone to remember dull previous lives that took place in the past 100 years under the most ordinary and mundane circumstances. Uruguay? Toronto? Cleveland, Ohio? Pitcairn Islands? Oddly, I've never heard a single past life memory that took place in these places. Mail clerk in Ludlow, Texas - 1963? nope. Garbage collector - Bemidji, Minnesota - 1957? nope. Waiter in San Francisco, 1976? nope. I've never heard anyone speak of these dull kinds of lives - even here in California where the discussion of past lives is as common as discussion of the weather.

It leads me to wonder what kind of "past lives" people "remembered" before television, history books, historical novels, romance novels, films, and all media forms flooded our lives, and before they were taken for granted? I wonder if a poor Mexican farmer living in abject poverty in a rural Mexican town back in 1751 had memories of being a pretty greek slave girl in a sunlight marble room, having never heard of Greece or marble. Our minds are stuffed with information dust bunnies...every scrap of media we've been exposed to during our entire life is lurking in the depths of mind waiting to be thrown back up in a wave of mental vomit. This inundation of imagery and stories that dominates life needs to be included when making considerations about what these types of appearances might actually represent, if they represent anything at all.
Vision is Mind
Mind is Empty
Emptiness is Clear Light
Clear Light is Union
Union is Great Bliss

- Dawa Gyaltsen

---

Disclaimer: I'm a non-religious practitioner of Theravada, Mahayana/Vajrayana, and Tibetan Bon Dzogchen mind-training.
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